With respect to my primary research interest in the economics of science, I have a research interest in how the scholarly communication process is organized and financed. My efforts in this area have been devoted to the invention and use of author charges by journals in the sciences. More recently I have been involved in investigating the role of quasi-public organizations on the organizational and financial structure of disciplines in the physical sciences.
With respect to my secondary research interest in labor economics, I have a research interest in the default asset that many reluctant or passive retirement savers utilize in their defined contribution pension plans. My efforts in this area have been devoted to critiquing aspects of the Pension Protection Act of 2006.
Research Agenda
My research agenda is two-fold. My research agenda first involves further delineating the ‘new’ economics of scholarly communication research methods. My research agenda second involves examining how to increase the economic security during retirement for low- and middle-income households.
Economics
of Science:
Given
that research is a process conducted by groups of
specialized scholars who build from each other’s work, a
critical component to the research and development process
is the publication of results. Research results lose their
value when they are not fully and rapidly made available to
others. The issue of concern at present is that researchers
in many disciplines are encountering a lack of access to
comprehensive collections of research results. When these
research results are collected in a journal, this lack of
access is referred to as the serials crisis. Although there
are many cited causes to the crisis, many agree that the
solution will arise as scholarly communities embrace
electronic communication methods. While great strides are
being made to develop comprehensive electronic academic
resources, very little research is being done on how to
finance it. Even less research is being done on the
consequences when it is financed in a particular way. My
research collects and draws extensions from these lost
threads and concerns.
My research investigates whether research productivity
within the university setting would increase if
universities devoted more resources to the publication of
research results and if scholars themselves directed these
resources. Universities in the United States contribute
funding to the scholarly communication process in the form
of reader subscriptions. It seems theoretically possible
that scholars and the university could benefit more from a
scholarly communication process that is funded by authors
who have an awareness of the costs of the scholarly
communication process. In an author funded scholarly
communication process efficiency gains are realized and
ownership and control over the intellectual property
contained within each article is retained within academic
communities. To explore this issue I seek to create a
database on the particulars on the production of knowledge
within the university setting, identify those scholarly
communities where an author charge supported scholarly
communication would achieve efficiency gains, highlight the
intellectual consequences to scholarly communities and
universities when this pricing mechanism is employed, and
explore the organizational format of such a scholarly
communication process (who would be the publishers, what
types of technology would be used, where would the money
come from, and who would own and control the intellectual
property within the scholarly article).
Labor
Economics:
As the
economic security for the aged provided by the employer
transitions away from defined benefit pension plans and
towards defined contribution pension plans, research in
neoclassical economics and behavioral finance has focused
on how best to design savings plans that serve passive
investors (investors whose decision is to do nothing). When
these defined contribution pension plans were first
devised, these passive investors not only had to make the
decision to enroll in the program, but also had to select a
contribution rate and where to invest their contributions.
Not surprisingly, the participation rate among the most
passive of investors (members of low- and middle-income
households) was abysmally low. More recently, defined
contribution pension plans have been reconfigured such that
the decision to enroll in a defined contribution plan is
made automatically for participants. While it has been
widely demonstrated that automatic enrollment in a defined
contribution pension increases the economic security of the
passive investor, significantly less attention has been
placed on what the default contribution rate and asset
allocation should be. The lack of scholarly research on
this topic is especially troubling given that the financial
services firms administering defined contribution plans
already trying to control the debate about what the default
asset ought to be for passively contributed pension monies.
My research explores what the ‘best’ default asset is for
the passive investor who is part of a low- or middle-income
household – an asset that provides the greatest degree of
economic security is easy for the investor to understand,
and this asset is portable across employers.
Rather than having passive members of low- and
middle-income households investing in conservative money
market funds or risky stock index funds, I suggest that the
federal government create inflation-indexed government
securities that would be administered by the Treasury
Department and would emulate the existing savings bond
program. Such an asset allows low- and middle-income
households to possess a pension account that would be
portable across employers and could be borrowed against in
times of need. Furthermore, this asset would provide a real
rate of return for low- and middle-income households in a
relatively risk-free manner. While the government would be
forced to bear some administrative costs, offering such
accounts would be similar to the motivation behind the
government selling debt through the savings bond program
(providing an asset by which low- and middle-income
households can save). The sale of government securities to
passive investors would also reduce our dependence on
non-domestic investors who buy government treasuries (thus
stabilizing the value of the dollar). To explore the
consequences of low- and middle-income households
possessing inflation-indexed government securities, I use
the Survey of Consumer Finances and the Health and
Retirement Study to trace out the effects of savings bonds
(a similar government security) on the economic security of
low- and middle-income households.
Dissertation
PAYING
TO PUBLISH: USING THE AUTHOR CHARGE TO FUND THE SCHOLARLY
JOURNAL
Asking
authors to contribute to the costs of scholarly
communication through an author charge pricing mechanism is
increasingly being considered a credible alternative way of
financing a reader-financed scholarly communication process
that is widely described as facing a crisis. However the
history and evolving economic justification of the author
charge pricing mechanism and the potential intellectual
property ramifications of having authors rather than
readers pay, up to this point, has not been explored. Such
a discussion however is critical to understanding the many
ways by which the scholarly communication process and the
research process are being re-engineered. I begin by
reviewing the economics of scholarly communication
literature and examining how the tools and metaphors in
this literature are used to understand the serials crisis,
the event where access to journals has decreased and prices
and the number of titles have increased. I argue that there
is a misunderstanding of the workings, determinants, and
deficiencies of the scholarly communication process in both
the popular and professional economics literature. This
thesis focuses on one aspect of this misunderstanding – the
choice of the pricing mechanism that is used to fund the
scholarly communication process. Chapter one outlines the
elements of the economics of science and the economics of
scholarly communication research agendas and the
methodological changes both have endured over the past
fifty years. Chapter two reviews the various understandings
of the cause of and solution to the serials crisis. The
remaining three chapters consider how author charge pricing
mechanisms have been used in the past in the disciplines of
physics and economics and outline the potential
consequences to its use in the present day environment
where research funding agencies increasingly seek ownership
and control over the intellectual property created during
the research process. These three chapters argue that
paying for the scholarly communication process is more than
just an economics problem and outline a framework for a
revised economics of scholarly communication research
agenda.